The Weekly Top 5

You recently severed your working relationship with Disney, stepping away from your television show and taking your trademarked thumbs with you. Any plans for when those thumbs might return to TV? And what do you think of the new At the Movies program, hosted by Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz?

I’m pleased that Richard Roeper and I will be presenting a new movie review program, to be announced in the near future. It will involve Richard, of the Chicago Sun-Times, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and Christy Lemire of the Associated Press. I have made no public comment about what Disney has done to our show.

I cannot tell you how excited this made me. Ever since Disney changed At the Movies it simply hasn’t been the same. In fact, it has sucked. To have the aforementioned movie critics in one show would be remarkable. I have a number of critics who I follow and all four of these are favorites. I hope this actually happens.

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2. Dollhouse episode “Briar Rose” advanced the storyline tremendously, setting up the season (hopefully not series) finale next week. Agent Ballard finally finds the Dollhouse and Alpha shows his face and true intentions. What a great episode. Look for my reaction on the episode soon.

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3. The Bamboozle Festival this weekend at Giants Stadium parking lot in East Rutherford, NJ. I went on Saturday and it was a blast! In my (biased) opinion, The Get Up Kids put on the best performance of the day, but New Found Glory and Journey were close behind.

Here’s some videos from the day:

Journey performing “Separate Ways”

The Get Up Kids performing “Mass Pike”

Third Eye Blind performing “Semi-Charmed Life”

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4. Disney joins Hulu!

After weeks of speculation, The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday announced that it has joined NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners as a joint venture partner and equity owner of video content aggregator Hulu.

Under the deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, Hulu will offer full-length episodes of current and library Disney TV programs such as “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Private Practice,” “Ugly Betty,” “Scrubs,” “Greek,” “Hope & Faith,” “Less than Perfect,” “Wizards of Waverly Place,” “Phineas and Ferb,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “General Hospital,” “The View” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” which will be streamed on an ad-supported basis.

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5. Wolverine slashes through the box office this weekend with an estimate of $87 million. Wow.